In Italian, a minestra is a soup, but a minestrone is a BIG soup – a nourishing meal in itself. Tender and moist chicken meatballs and a host of seasonal herbs and vegetables enhance the depth of flavour in this delicious one-bowl meal.
Ingredients
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
250 g skinless chicken breast fillet, cut into chunks
1 yellow or green zucchini, quartered lengthways and thickly sliced
Preparation
Heat the oil in a medium non-stick saucepan over a low heat. Add the onion and garlic, and cook, stirring often, for about 5 minutes, or until the onion is tender. Transfer to a medium bowl and cool to room temperature.
Meanwhile, place the chicken in a food processor and pulse on and off until finely minced. Transfer the chicken to the bowl with the onion mixture.
Add the oats, milk, 2 tablespoons of the parmesan and 2 tablespoons of the basil, and mix to combine. Gently shape the mixture into 24 small meatballs.
Combine the stock, tomatoes and water in a large saucepan and bring to the boil over a high heat. Add the pasta and silverbeet and cook for 5 minutes. Reduce to a simmer.
Add the remaining basil and the meatballs, and cook for 1 minute. Add the zucchini, cover with a lid and simmer for about 5 minutes or until the meatballs are cooked through and the silverbeet is tender. Serve sprinkled with the remaining parmesan.
Here's a great new way to scramble eggs – cooked in a double saucepan or in a bowl over simmering water, without any butter, then mixed with crème fraîche for a creamy result. With strips of smoked salmon and fresh dill, this is the ultimate luxury brunch dish.
Flakes of smoked trout, cream cheese and fresh dill combine to make a well–flavoured filling for this light spinach roll. It is much simpler to make than it looks – just make sure that the spinach is squeezed really dry before adding to the sauce base.
The hollows in hard–boiled egg halves make perfect containers for a tasty filling – here carrot and chive – and the eggs look attractive served on a bed of ribbon vegetables and lamb's lettuce. All you need is some bread to make a satisfying lunch.
For these delectable chilli–flavoured omelettes, the eggs are whisked with cornflour to give them a slightly firmer texture, suitable for folding round a colourful and tasty filling of stir–fried vegetables and rice noodles.